I BELIEVE
THE INCARNATION OF JESUS
DR. JIM DIXON
LUKE 1:26-38
JULY 5, 2009
Christmas is only five months and twenty days away, one hundred and seventy-three days. And I don’t know how you feel about that. I don’t know how you feel about Christmas decorations, Christmas lights, Christmas trees, food, and family. I don’t know how you feel about Christmas shopping and the giving of gifts, Christmas caroling, singing in worship. I don’t know how you feel, but I know I love Christmas. I would like Christmas to be all year long because it’s all about Jesus. We’re coming today to a portion of the Apostles’ Creed that’s all about Jesus and it begins with Christmas. It begins with his birth and it takes us through his suffering and death and resurrection and ascension and judgment, all of his ministry on this earth and to this creation.
So, we begin again with the Apostles’ Creed. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” That’s what we dealt with last week. We looked at the Godhead, we looked at Father and Son, we looked briefly at the Holy Spirit. Today we take a deeper look at Jesus Christ and, to an extent, at the Holy Spirit. So, the next phrase in the Apostles’ Creed is this: “Who is conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.” The incarnation. Christmas. So this is the next section of the Apostles’ Creed: “Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”
I want to take a couple of moments and take a look at the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is defined in the 34th chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith in this way: “The Holy Spirit is of one nature, or essence, with the Father and Son, from whom he precedes and with whom he is equal in power and glory.” There’s a great mystery about the person of the Holy Spirit. The Ecclesiastical Councils decreed that he preceded from the Father and the Son; the Son stated that he preceded from the Father through the Son. It is true that the Holy Spirit, who is God, is sent by the Father and sent by the Son that God the Father ministers by his Spirit throughout the world, that our Lord Jesus Christ indwells us, tabernacles within us by his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit shares people, power, and glory with the Father and the Son. These things are taught clearly in God’s Word.
Now, the Holy Spirit was active in creation. The Bible tells us in Genesis 1 that the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters as the creation was formed. And the word in the Hebrew means to give birth and to give life. And so, there is a sense in which God in his fullness created, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We think of the Holy Spirit as birthing the creation, as bringing life. The Bible tells us many things about the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin. Have you ever been convicted of sin? Were you ever so convicted that you came to the foot of the cross and asked Jesus to save you and to be your Savior and Lord? That conviction comes from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin and the Holy Spirit draws us to the Savior.
Jesus himself tells us this in John 14, 15, and 16, when he speaks of another “comforter” that would bear witness to him and draws us to the Savior. Have you ever felt the tug to believe in Jesus? That’s the work of the Holy Spirit within you. He indwells us. He indwells us with that regeneration when we place our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. He comes to live within us. He ingifts us and he also imparts to us the fruit of the Spirit.
Now, the gifts of the spirit are identified in Romans 12. They are identified in 1 Corinthians 12. There is a smaller listing in Ephesians 4 and in 1 Peter 4. You add up all the gifts of the Spirit listed in those passes you come up with 32 gifts of the Spirit, but when you account for overlaps there are perhaps 19 to 21 different gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are all precious, all wonderful, all given by the Spirit to the Body of Christ for ministry on this earth that the church might minister in power. My hope and prayer would be that you are open to all the gifts of the Holy Spirit and that you desire them.
The fruit of the Spirit is in a sense even more important. The fruit of the Spirit is identified in Galatians 5. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. The fruit of the Spirit is the character of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the one who imparts the character of Christ to us, and it is summed up in love. We see in the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 that the fruit of the spirit is more important than the gifts because Paul says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and I understand all knowledge and all mysteries, I have all faith so as to move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have to the poor and deliver my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing.” So, we understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit, how he indwells us, he ingifts us, he empowers us, and yes, transforms us with the fruit of the Spirit.
The Bible tells us he also seals us for the day of redemption. In the Apostles’ Creed we have another ministry of the Holy Spirit and it is, too, a mystery, which tells us the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus in the womb of Mary—that Jesus, when he was born, was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Now, we may in our finiteness and in our humanity, never fully understand this. But I tell you (and it’s so important and it’s so biblical) when Mary said, “How can this be?” the Angel Gabriel said, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born shall be called Holy, the Son of God.” So, you see in the birth of Jesus God the Holy Spirit was at work, and indeed Mary had her part. So you have the God-man. In a sense born he was of God and in a sense born of man through Mary. This is so important to a full understanding of who Jesus Christ is, that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit at his birth.
Now we look at Mary. “Born of the virgin Mary.” And I think as Protestants sometimes we ignore Mary. How tragic that is. I think we grieve the Holy Spirit and we grieve God when we ignore the one chosen of God to give birth to the Son of God. And truly, in the household of faith and the history of the faith, Mary is great and it is right that we honor her. There is much confusion about Mary and many doctrines are controversial.
There is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Many people don’t understand the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. They believe that the Immaculate Conception has to do with the birth of Jesus, that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but that’s not the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception has to do with the birth of Mary, not the birth of Jesus. Traditionally, Mary was born of Anna and Joachim, and according to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, she was born without sin—born without the taint of sin, born without original sin. This doctrine was first proposed and defended in the 13th century by John Duns Scotus. Duns Scotus was a brilliant theologian of the Middle Ages and a professor at Oxford University. Born in Scotland, he was great in his mind, in his theology, in his thought, and he proposed and defended this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that Mary was born without the taint of sin.
Pope Pius IX in the 19th century, in the year 1954, made this official Roman Catholic doctrine, but it’s not in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t even mention the name of Mary’s parents and the Bible certainly doesn’t tell us that Mary was born without the taint of sin. But you can understand why Christians have come up with that doctrine, because they want to understand how Mary could have given birth to the Son of God. And so, she must have been special. So, you see this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
You also see the doctrine of Perpetual Virginity applied to Mary. Some people will say that she was not simply a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, but perpetually a virgin. Of course, this doesn’t seem to fit Matthew 1:25, where the Bible tells us that Joseph knew not Mary until she had given birth and they called his name Jesus. The implication is that he knew her after she had given birth. It’s also difficult to understand the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary since Jesus had brothers and the Bible also mentioned sisters, and the brothers are named as Simon and Joses and James and Jude. The sisters are not named, but we are told that Jesus also has sisters. And if they were born of Mary and Joseph, then obviously she was not a perpetual virgin.
But that’s the Helvidic view, that they were actually brothers and sisters of Jesus, born of Mary. There is another view called the Epiphanian view and the Epiphanian view was that they were actually born only to Joseph by a prior marriage and therefore they were half-brothers and half-sisters to Jesus and that Joseph was very old, in fact, when he married Mary. And this may be true, but the Bible doesn’t mention it, and so we simply don’t know.
And then there’s the Hieronymian view, first posed by Jerome. And the Hieronymian view is that these brothers and sisters of Jesus were actually cousins. They take the view that the word “adelphos” or “adelphoi,” the Greek word for brother, can mean kinsman or cousin. And that is true, it can. But that’s a rare meaning of adelphos. There is a specific Greek word that means cousin and would be far more specific. Normally, adelphos means brother, or “adelphas” means sister. So, we would say that the likelihood is that Jesus had brothers or sisters.
But again, you understand why the doctrine of Perpetual Virginity of Mary arose. You understand people want to honor Mary. And of course, Protestants criticize Catholics because they want to honor Mary and of course Catholics are not supposed to worship Mary, not according to Catholic doctrine, because in Catholicism there’s dulia, and hyperdulia, and latria. Dulia is honor, hyperdulia is high honor, latria is worship. Latria is never to be given to Mary, not in Catholic doctrine—only hyperdulia, or high honor. And again in Protestantism and Catholicism you have people who get carried away. Understand, we should honor Mary. You know the Bible says that all nations shall call her blessed and all generations shall call her blessed. So, we call her blessed this morning. She was favored by God, graced by God, and her faith was great. Her statement to the angel Gabriel was amazing. “Behold, I am the doula of the Lord.” I am a slave. I am a servant. I am a handmaiden. “Be it done to me according to your Word.” What faith! We honor her. God has honored her. See, the important thing is that Jesus is the God-man and he is fully human through Mary and he is fully God and therefore the Holy Spirit participated in his coming into the world. Conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. It is pretty important stuff.
“He suffered under Pontius Pilate. Conceived of the Holy Spirit. Born of the Virgin Mary.” Suffered under Pontius Pilate. Crucified. Now we come to the passion. I hope you don’t just say these words as rote and not feel their power, that it doesn’t move your heart or your soul. He suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified. When Jesus appeared before Pontius Pilate, he’d already been scourged and was barely alive. The fact of history is this: Many people did not survive Roman scourging. They did not survive it. They were not able to be crucified because the scourging had killed them. So, Jesus is really near death as he is standing before Pontius Pilate and is yet to be crucified.
When we were in Israel, we had 6 tour buses and we had 6 Jewish guides. The head guide was named Ronny. Ronny said to me that he’d seen the movie Passion of the Christ and he said he was concerned that people might see the movie and think that only the Jews killed Jesus. He said, “You know, Pontius Pilate was not a good man. History shows that he crucified many people with malice, capriciousness. He was an evil man.” And that is true, but I hope you understand when you think of the death and the crucifixion of Christ that it really wasn’t Romans or Jews that killed him. We did it. I hope you understand that it’s all people in all ages that he died for. I hope you understand that he died for the sin of the world. No one had power to crucify him. He is Son of God. When the Roman soldiers came to seize him in Gethsemane, he said to Peter, who had drawn his sword, “Do you not know that I could at once summon 12 legions of angels? Do you not know that I could summon the angelic hosts?” They did not have the power to crucify him, Romans or Jews. He died for us. For this he was born. For this he came into the world, that he might die for our sin and for the sin of the whole world. He chose this. He chose suffering. He chose death that he might pay the penalty for our sin and die in substitutionary atonement. So, he suffered and he was scourged and he was crucified. And it was all for us.
“He died and he was buried.” When we were in Jerusalem a few weeks ago and we were with Randy and Nathan and some of the choir and many of you, we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which stands over the traditional site of the Tomb of Jesus. And we went to the Garden Tomb, where we had a communion service, another possible site of the Tomb of Jesus. But the location of his tomb doesn’t matter. You see, death could not hold him. We have the Apostles’ Creed. “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. But you see, the Creed goes on. The testimony of Scripture goes on.
“He descended into hell.” At least that’s the phraseology that most of you learned as children. He descended into hell. You notice as we have learned this, we have said, “He descended into Hades,” because that’s where the Bible tells us he descended. He didn’t descend into hell. The Devil himself is not yet in hell. The Bible tells us that hell was crafted for the Devil and his angels. Hell exists. It is real, but judgment awaits. The keeping place of the dead in the Bible is not called hell. The keeping place of the dead in the Bible is called Hades, and Jesus descended into Hades. The Bible makes that clear. Now, what he did there is not clear. You have passages like 1 Peter 3 that are very controversial. We are told that Jesus, after his death and before his resurrection, in that three-day interim while he was in the spirit, went into Hades and he preached to the spirits of those who disobeyed in the days of Noah. Wow! What did he preach? Did he preach judgment? Did he preach the gospel? We don’t know. However you view it, there are problems. But he went to Hades and he did some stuff. You understand, he didn’t go anywhere. He’s the Son of God. And some day every knee is going to bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue will confess Jesus Christ is Lord.
“The third day he rose again from the dead.” He rose from the dead. Death could not hold him, and he is the hope of the world. So, this proclamation is at the heart of the Apostles’ Creed. The third day he rose from the dead. We believe this. We believe he is the hope of the world. We believe he conquered sin and he conquered death. My mom and dad both passed away and they are both with Christ in heaven. My dad died 13 years ago and my mom about a year and a half ago, and I miss them. Now, I’m going into surgery tomorrow, and I’d love to be able to call my mom and dad. I’d love to talk to my dad and I’d love to be able to ask my mom to pray. What a prayer warrior she was. My brothers, they also miss my parents, and our wives miss my mom and dad and they miss their own parents.
We go to the grave of my mom and dad, where they are buried, and we place flowers there, but their soul and spirit have already gone to heaven, to paradise. They are buried, their bodies, “dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, one of the most famous burial sites in the world. Many of you have gone to Arlington Cemetery outside of Washington D.C. You’ve seen the Eternal Flame that burns over the grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a famous burial site. Some of you have traveled to London and you’ve gone to Westminster Abbey where poets and kings are buried. Some of you have traveled to Giza in Egypt. You’ve seen the Great Pyramids. You’ve gone down to Luxor, the Valley of the Kings. You’ve seen famous tombs, famous burial sites.
But you see, the Sepulcher of Christ, that garden tomb, is unique in all the world. It’s empty. It’s famous because it’s empty. Death could not hold him, and he is the hope of the world. Then he ascended into heaven. And I don’t know what you think of when you think of heaven. There is a sense in which heaven is going to evolve. One day, the New Jerusalem will descend towards earth. One day heaven itself will encompass the whole of the creation, all the work of God’s hands, and God will create a new Heaven and a New Earth wherein righteousness dwells. One day heaven is going to be everything. But Jesus ascended into heaven, sometimes in the Bible called “paradisio,” a Persian word borrowed by the Hebrews and the Greeks. It means garden or park or forest, a place of great beauty. Sometimes in the Bible it’s called the third heaven because the atmosphere of the earth is called the first heaven, the cosmos is the second heaven, but the dwelling place of God is the third heaven. So, Jesus ascended there and he sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. And so, when the Apostles’ Creed says, “He sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty,” that’s the seat of authority. That’s the seat of power. He is at the right hand of the Father, interceding for the saints, interceding for us. He has power and authority.
In the last few weeks, we looked at power in the sense of the Greek word “dunamis,” which means physical power—omnipotence. We also looked at power in the sense of the Greek word “exousia,” which means authority, or to reign and rule. And Jesus has it all. He has all power. He’s at the right hand of the Father and he will come to judge the living and the dead. It’s this phrase we close with today, “From whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.” He’s at the right hand of the Father—he is in the third heaven; he is in paradise. He has sent his Spirit, but he will come. Jesus will come again. He will come again, and he will receive his people to himself and he will judge the nations. He will judge the world. He will judge the living and the dead.
You know, jaws drop and people marvel when the Bible affirms that Jesus will judge the living and the dead. You can travel around the world and you can talk to Hindus, you can talk to Buddhists, you can talk to Muslims, you can talk to tribal animists, you can talk to atheists, and when you say Jesus Christ is going to judge the living and the dead, they’re stunned that you would say that. But who else has the right? It’s Jesus Christ who died for the sin of the world. It’s Jesus Christ who gave his life in substitutionary atonement. He died, offering forgiveness to every single person on the planet. Who else has the right to judge? He is the Son of God, seated at the right hand of the Father. I marvel sometimes, kind of laugh, at people who say, “I just think Jesus was a great teacher. Don’t believe in his atonement on the cross. I don’t believe he’s Lord. I don’t believe he’s God, but boy what a teacher!” I think, wow. What Bible are you reading? Do you understand what Jesus has said? Do you know that Jesus said, “The Father judges no one”? His audience must have been stunned when he said that. “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the son, that all might honor the son in the same way that they honor the Father. Do not marvel at this. The day is coming when all who are in the ground, all who are in the grave, will hear my voice and come forth, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting death.” A great teacher? He’s Son of God and he will come and he will judge the living and the dead.
If he were to come today, you would be the living. The dead would be those who have gone before us, but he is the judge of all. If you have received him as Lord and Savior, you need not fear. There’s a sense in which you’ve already passed out of judgment into life. Your ticket is already punched for heaven. You’ve been saved by his grace as you’ve received him as Lord and Savior. If you haven’t done that, you can do it this morning. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.